“A man who is full of the love of God is not content with blessing his family only, but thinks about all of the people in the world, anxious to bless the whole human race.” - Joseph Smith

Thursday, May 15, 2014

I got here safe and am alright...

Dear mom,

Thank you so much for the information you sent me regarding my card. I´ll see what I can do regarding that since it is collect and I don´t know if I´m supposed to do that with the mission phone. Since I´m in the mission now, my p-days are Mondays now, but I was allowed to mail today to let you know that I got here safe and am alright. Unfortunately, I don´t have pictures to send you because I need a cable for my camera that I left at our house, so I´ll send you some next week. My companion is an American named Elder Wilcox and he´s a real good trainer. My area is a little place called Tixcocob. You´d love the vegetation here. The people are all very nice and humble. The majority are Catholic, so we´ll see what we can do. There are some active members, but the rest are inactive and we meet in a small building for church, so it´s just a house of prayer since there aren´t enough who pay tithing for us to have an actual building. We´ll see what we can do with that as well. Just to update a bit, the president and his wife are really nice people. They met us at the airport and then we ate Subway for dinner. We went back to the mission office and all of the new Elders and Hermanas went elsewhere to sleep for the night. We slept in the home of the assistants. My hammock was wonderful. (I get my own, just so you know.) The next day we had an interesting experience as we went to the mission home for breakfast. We were told that we had to give a Book of Mormon to the taxi driver on our way there. It worked out. He already had one, but we gave him specific things to read. Later, we were told some things to be aware of in the mission, such as the mission rules and goals. It seems a bit strict, but oh well. It´s nothing that worries me in regards to conduct. The music is just a bit limited for my taste, but I don´t have any, so no big. I can´t remember exactly what exactly all the goals of excellence are, but this one I remember for sure: we´re to baptize every week. There was already one set up for this Sunday, so it´s likely I´ll be doing it, I think. It´s an exciting goal which requires much diligence. My trainer is very good about being able to merge things into a gospel conversation with anyone, so I hope to get to that point. So far, we´ve just been teaching members and less actives since It´s been a weird week so far with the scheduling of things. Yesterday, I went on splits with another missionary because our companions had a meeting in Merida, so I served in a place called Canek. It was a good experience to teach the members and less-actives. It´s a tough area because few members help with missionary work, but I hope to serve there sometime. Please tell dad I was sorry I couldn´t call him. When I was going to after I was done talking to you, we had to board our flight to Mexico. Please tell him hi for me. I don´t know how letter writing will work while I´m here since I have no idea where a post office is, but we´ll see how that works, but just in case, I might not write for about 12 weeks while I´m here, but I will email. I´m really glad to be here. It´s a bit tough waking up in the mornings because I´m still just adjusting to being in the mission, but once I get going, I feel good and I really enjoy working with my companion and also just serving the members or whoever we may be teaching. Keep me in your prayers, though, because I´m still having a hard time just adjusting and stuff since this for sure isn´t home. Please say hi to everyone for me. Love you tons!

Just So You Know...

I am Jessica, Manuel's cousin, he asked me to create this blog for him while he is on his mission. I will update it weekly with letters from him and any other information he wants me to share. I will update his address as needed. Feel free to leave comments, Manuel will not be able to read them until he gets home but I'm sure he will appreciate them.